Talk:Brian Hanley (microbiologist)

MIT Technology Review Article
Bluntly put the MIT Technology Review article is garbage. It is full of false statements that I, the interviewee, did not make. It grossly misrepresents what I did say. It misreports facts right down to the make and condition of my car, which is a red mini-van that is not "battered". It misrepresents simple things, like the photos Antonio took. He made it clear he wanted to take pictures of the site before we met. I accommodated him, though with some reluctance, and I cut him off because I thought it was getting weird. But he represented it as if I pushed him to take the pictures. Etc. But let's get into the specifics that apply here.

Relative to this wikipedia page, the false statements are:

1. I specifically disclaimed, and always have disclaimed, that the gene therapy will extend life. The only thing a scientist can say is that it may extend health span. that is a very different thing from claiming life-extension. I explained to Antonio that nobody can say that without conducting very long, very expensive studies on large numbers of people. Those studies span multiple generations of scientists quite often. Yes, health span improvement is treatment of ageing. This can be seen on the top of the GHRH page on the Butterfly Sciences web site.

2. I never claimed that this gene therapy would "engineer my DNA". That requires editing and use of CRISPR, TA:ENS, or Zinc Fingers. Anyone who knows anything about gene therapy can see that even within the article, there is nothing about that. I never said it. I never implied it. That is inaccurate. There are quite a few forms of gene therapy.


 * The second sentence should read, "...He is known for using an experimental gene therapy to try to improve health span, and is the first subject in the study.

3. I was not 61 years old Feb 2017. I was 60.

4. I did not found Butterfly Sciences to treat cachexia in AIDS. I never said that to Antonio, he made that up. The design of the HIV/AIDS late stage rescue treatment has been available on the Butterfly Sciences web site for years. I also explained carefully to Antonio that the GHRH component was intended to go together with it. The reason is that HIV's gp120 protein has high affinity for GHRH. This is explained in the bottom half of the company web site on the GHRH treatmentref>title=GHRH plasmid gene therapy for aging|url=https://bf-sci.com/?page_id=73. There is no mention of cachexia there.

5. I did not say that I decided to use myself as test subject because I couldn't get funding. I said that I had decided to do this from the beginning. There is a long history of Self-experimentation in medicine. 15 nobel prizewinners did it, and 7 of them did it in the area of their Nobel prize. The Nuremberg codes which are the foundation of ethics in medicine, approve of this in code number 5. (Note, the Wikipedia page on Nuremberg Code needs work. The full codes are not that long.)

6.The correct figure for the cost is $500,000. That is what I spent in development. Do a search on the cited page for 500. You will see it. There were over 15 candidate gene therapies produced.

7. Saying I am an "online commenter" has pejorative connotation, and should be removed. That is Antonio's language from his article. I have written quite a few articles, both paid and unpaid. An example of a paid article: "We’re closer to Alpha Centauri than to cryopreserving humans". A couple of examples of unpaid articles: "Ethics in Treatment With Telomerase", "The Science behind Orange Juice" It would take too long to list all my articles. It would be accurate to say I am a somewhat prolific writer, both academically and of articles intended for the lay public.

8. What I told Antonio is that I wrote to the FDA, asking them if there was a way to formally tell them I intended to run the experiment. There was not. Self-experiments are a special category, and the FDA does not get involved in going after self-experiments. You see, the whole point of all that regulation is to protect test subjects from unscrupulous parties. That does not apply to oneself. Antonio and I talked about this at some length. Antonio misrepresented what I said.

8. Hank Greely is wrong. This is obvious because I still have a fine relationship with the IRB. In march, my 3rd IRB review report was approved by the board. The IRB doesn't get involved with who the test subjects are. I did inform them I was the subject. It is not an issue. See Self-experimentation in medicine. Antonio misused the IRB document I had sent him. He told me at the start that he needed to see it to prove that I had really done this. He said that is all it would ever be used for, and he would not contact anyone on it without my permission, publish it, distribute it, or use it in any other way. Then, 6 months after our interview, Antonio use a phone number on it, and was verbally abusive, which is a journalistic technique to get a reaction. IRB matters are confidential and they cannot comment to third parties. He knew this, but was trying to play them.

9. You can also see that Hank Greely was wrong if you read the Self-experimentation in medicine page. The book by Altman concludes that bias in self-experiments by scientists is extremely rare.

The most accurate article written in MSM was from Paul Tullis at Town and Country magazine. He is the only American journalist who was diligent in his attempt to convey what I said accurately. Neither Tad Friend at the New Yorker, nor Antionio Regolado did so.

La Republicca was pretty good. Globo TV was quite good. Ymandelbrot (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The MIT article conflicts with other articles, it does not internally support that he was trying to engineer his DNA, and it conflicts with the company web site. This article does have a strange tone, that almost seems like it's an attack in places, and it reads like a tabloid. For now, the line that this bio subject complained about in #5 stands, but maybe not for long 2602:306:CF5D:5F0:6CF3:8CC3:7BBF:D1A4 (talk) 22:11, 13 November 2017 (UTC).

FDA/IRB
Whoever wrote this didn't understand the regulation of clinical trials. The law says that you need an IND approved by the FDAl and approval by a local IRB. Both, not either/or.

The IND mostly focuses on toxicology and CMC (chemical controls and manufacturing). The FDA wants to know:
 * a) do you understand exactly what the stuff is, that you are giving to people? and
 * b) do you understand the dosing and toxicology well enough?  (you have to submit tox testing showing the lowest dose that causes harm in a relevant animal model and the highest dose you intend to give to people needs to be well below that level).

You also need to get local IRB approval. The IRB is primarily concerned with ethics - they ask questions like A doctor who participates in non-IRB-approved clinical research would probably lose his or her license, and any company or person who participated would probably be barred by the FDA from getting any IND approved or from participating in future clinical research in any way. Jytdog (talk) 22:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Will we learn something important enough to put the clinical trial subjects at risk? (to answer that, the IRB will also look at whether the research plan is sound)
 * What is the strategy to obtain and document informed consent?
 * Do the investigators have any relevant conflicts of interest and if so, how has that affected the protocol and is that disclosed adequately to clinical trial subjects?